


Once Upon a Dream

by doctorbuffypotterlock79



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Brooke is a clueless idiot and we love her, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian AU, b and v are just soft babies, fairy tale AU, minor original characters, sleeping beauty/maleficent-inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 16:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20585330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorbuffypotterlock79/pseuds/doctorbuffypotterlock79
Summary: Lesbian AU inspired bySleeping Beauty/Maleficent.Vanessa is a cursed princess sent to live in a cottage nearby fairy Brooke





	Once Upon a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched _Maleficent_ for the first time recently and my brain has to make everything about Branjie, and I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. I did play around with the story and make some changes, but the main points are the same. I've never done anything like this before, and I hope you enjoy! Please let me know what you think!

_Once upon a time, there was a cruel king. _

_The king had a one-year-old daughter, the princess, the most beautiful baby in the country. His wife had died in labor. Some said that made him cruel, others said he always was. In his cruelty, he decided to hunt fairies. _

_One night he came upon a fairy that fought back and struck him. He decided to punish the fairy. He had his guards seize her young daughter, who had blonde hair and green eyes and inky black wings, and he pulled out his iron knife and severed her wings while the girl screamed and cried. _

_In retaliation, the woman put a curse on the king, so his daughter would suffer as hers did: before she turned 16, the princess would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into an eternal sleep that could only be cured by true love’s kiss. She would sleep forever, as such a thing did not exist. _

_The king gathered all the wheels in the country and locked them in the castle dungeon. He sent his daughter to live in a cottage with three servants, to keep her safe until she turned 16…_

The tall grass was cozy around Brooke as she stretched her neck to watch the girl. Every day she came outside to play in the flower garden by her cottage. Her giggles travelled to the woods where Brooke hid, and the sound made her smile, but it made her sad, too. She wished she could play with her, but the girl was human, and her mother said she couldn’t play with humans. She was supposed to play with the other fairies, but none of them wanted to play with her because she didn’t have wings. Her mother owned a shop in the village selling potions and remedies, and Brooke spent her days alone, usually up in the trees with forest creatures as company. She was five years old and had never had a friend, or anyone to talk to. 

The girl was wobbling along after a pink butterfly, her curly brown hair reflecting the golden sun. The three women she lived with were by the cottage door, arguing about the eggs they purchased in the village. The girl’s fingers strained to touch the soft wings, and she reached the edge of the cliff without noticing. 

_She was going to fall!_ Instinctively, Brooke shot out her hands, and the branches on the cliffside rushed to cup around the girl. She laughed happily as it lifted her back up to the cool grass, and Brooke took a slow breath. 

Brooke ducked back into the trees before the girl saw her. She wasn’t supposed to let people see her use magic, that’s what her mother always said. She said humans wouldn’t be nice to her if they saw. She ran her hand over the stumps on Brooke’s back when she said it, even though Brooke didn’t like her mother to touch them, and she knew she had to listen. 

But she also knew she would give anything to hear the girl’s laugh up close.  
—-

Vanessa had been in the tiny cottage with her aunties as long as she could remember. She had apple trees bearing shiny red, sweet fruit, the vegetable patch with thick green vines, and flowers blooming in every color of the rainbow. She was four years old, and she didn’t want anything--except another girl to play with. 

Sometimes she thought she saw a tuft of blonde hair in the grass, but everytime she got close, it was gone. One day her Aunt Kiki let her go to the edge of their land, where the tall grass started. 

She trudged through, the grass taller than her in some spots, until she met the base of a knotted tree. Perched atop one of the branches was a girl. A real girl, with blonde hair and a dark blue dress. She stared at the yellow-orange leaves, and she seemed sad. Maybe she wanted a friend too. 

“What’s your name?” Vanessa called up to the girl. 

The girl startled, but she quickly grabbed hold of the branch before she fell. She didn’t answer. 

“I said, what’s your name?” Vanessa repeated. She wanted to climb up but couldn’t reach the branches, fingers grasping uselessly. The girl noticed and climbed down with ease.

She dropped onto long legs. “B-Brooke,” she said quietly. She looked at the ground, and Vanessa wondered if she hadn’t talked to many people before and if that was why she was scared. Vanessa wanted to help her so she wouldn’t be scared. 

“I’m Vanessa! How old are you?” 

“Six.” Brooke still had her head down, but her voice was as soft as the honey Vanessa put on her bread. 

“Aren’t ya going to ask me how old I am?” Vanessa demanded. 

Brooke looked up and smiled for the first time. Vanessa wondered if it was for the first time ever. Her eyes were like grass in summertime. “How old are you?”

“Four!” She proudly held up four fingers. “You wanna be my friend and play hide-and-seek?”

Brooke’s eyes met the ground again and she played with the sleeve of her dress. “Oh, I-I can’t. I’ll get in trouble.”

“Oh.” Vanessa kicked at the dirt and tried not to cry. So she still wouldn’t have a friend. 

“Well, maybe for a little while?” Brooke asked. 

Vanessa grinned. She grabbed Brooke’s hand and tugged her toward the vegetable patch, her laughs growing louder now that she had someone to share them with.  
\---

“Race you to the pond!” Brooke called over her shoulder. 

“No fair, your legs are longer!” 

Brooke’s nine-year-old legs easily overtook Vanessa’s six (almost seven, she would insist)-year-old ones, and she smiled as she slowed her run. 

Her cheeks were flushed and the redness deepened once Vanessa caught up, her eyes bright like sweet chocolate. 

The pond twinkled bright blue, and it felt like you could see clear into the other side of the world when you looked at the water. 

“Will you show me how to skip stones like you do?” Vanessa asked. 

“Sure.”

She closed her fingers over Vanessa’s hand, gently guiding her as the stones rippled across the shimmering water. The morning passed in blissful joy, Vanessa telling Brooke stories about her crazy aunts, until Vanessa got four skips in a row and threw her arms around Brooke in an excited hug. 

“How’d you get so good at that?” Vanessa asked as she passed Brooke a lemon cake from her bag. 

Brooke bit her lip and fidgeted with her dress cuff. _Would Vanessa tease her?_ “I used to play by myself a lot, before I met you,” she confessed. 

“Oh.” She paused. “Brooke, am I your best friend?”

“Yes,” she smiled. “Yes, you are.” She was Brooke’s only friend, but Brooke knew that even if she had a thousand friends, Vanessa would be her favorite. She understood Brooke, and she didn’t tell her to stop thinking and talk more, like her mother did. Vanessa just let her be quiet when she needed to. 

“You’re mine too!” Vanessa exclaimed, and Brooke knew she didn’t need to worry about Vanessa laughing at her. The tart sweetness of the lemon cake burst in her mouth. Vanessa smiled, and Brooke could feel her secret inside her, bursting at the seams, eager to come out. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but Vanessa wasn’t just anyone. She was only six (almost seven) but Brooke knew she could trust her. Her words were interrupted by rumbling thunder as fat raindrops splattered into the pond. 

“We better go, my aunts will be mad if I’m out in this.” Vanessa swallowed the rest of her cake and jumped up, hair already damp. She was only wearing a light, short-sleeved dress because she liked to feel the fresh air on her skin.

Brooke removed her hooded cloak and wrapped it around Vanessa’s shoulders, the younger girl swimming in the fabric. 

They ran back home, laughing and stomping in puddles and catching raindrops on their tongue. 

By the time she got home, Brooke was soaked through and shivering but her face was still stretched into a wide grin, and her mother was so busy telling her to put on dry clothes she didn’t notice the missing cloak. 

When she caught a chill a few days later and had to choke down one of her mother’s potions, she didn’t even mind the sour taste. 

Especially not when Vanessa came over with a pot of soup her aunts made and practiced reading to Brooke while she was stuck in bed.  
\---

Vanessa snatched the hot bread off Aunt Yvie’s tray and rushed outside to give it to Brooke while it was still warm. The honey smeared on top melted sticky over her fingers.

She and Brooke happily chewed their bread, bundled up in heavy winter cloaks as they kicked through light snowfall. She told Brooke how her Aunt Silky yelled at her yesterday for getting her dress dirty, and then she burned the bread and Aunt Yvie said it was better that way and Silky yelled more. Brooke nodded along and laughed and Vanessa was glad Brooke didn’t tell her to stop blabbering like her aunts did. Brooke let her talk as much as she wanted, and she was a good listener. 

Brooke gave her a boost and Vanessa climbed one of the tall trees, creeping to the end of a thin branch high off the ground. The winter sun heated her face and cast sparkles off the snow—

_Crack!_

The branch snapped and the ground was rushing up to meet Vanessa before she could even react. Her eyes squeezed shut, but the impact was unexpectedly soft. She opened her eyes slowly and saw she was on a cloud, drifting gently to the ground. 

Brooke stood nearby with her eyes narrowed intensely and her hands moving downward…_she was controlling the cloud_, Vanessa realized. _Brooke was magic_. 

She ran to Brooke as soon as she touched down safely. 

“Are you...are you a fairy?” 

Vanessa always felt there was a part of Brooke that she hid, like a sun behind clouds. There were times when Brooke looked at her and opened her mouth but nothing came out. Or when Brooke watched birds soaring through the bright blue sky, wings outstretched, and had tears in her eyes that neither of them mentioned. She wondered why Brooke never shared it with her, but if she was a fairy, then Vanessa understood. 

Brooke stared at her snowy boots and ran a hand through her hair. She kept opening and closing her mouth, and Vanessa knew it took her a while to find words sometimes and she just had to wait. She fiddled with the bracelet she’d gotten for her birthday while she waited. 

“I...yes, I am a fairy.” Brooke looked her directly in the eyes. “You can’t tell. You can’t tell _anyone_. Promise me, Vanessa. You have to promise.” Brooke’s voice started fearful and went serious. She sounded much older than her 11 years. Her shaky hands gripped Vanessa’s shoulders. 

Vanessa knew she had to listen. Her aunts told her fairies were peaceful and most people just let them be, but some hunted them for sport. Bad things happened to fairies that got captured and she didn’t want anyone to hurt Brooke. “I promise. You can trust me, I swear.”

Brooke sighed and removed her hands. “I’m sorry. I just, no one can know.”

“I understand. I’ll even give you a pinky promise.” She extended her pinky and Brooke’s longer one wrapped around it, their wrists brushing against each other, but Brooke quickly jumped back, hissing in pain. 

“What’s wrong?” Vanessa asked worriedly.

“Your bracelet. Is it made of iron?” Brooke rubbed tentatively at her skin.

“Yes, why?”

“It’s poison to my kind. It hurts us,” Brooke explained, color slowly returning to her face. 

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” Vanessa ripped it off her wrist and stashed it in her bag. 

“It’s all right. Let’s do the promise for real this time.” Brooke smiled and reached out her pinky, and Vanessa took it.  
\---

Brooke tore through the forest to show Vanessa the new birds that had just hatched. They only had the afternoons to meet now, as Vanessa began morning lessons with her aunts when she turned 12 last year. 

She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Vanessa sitting in the grass by her flower garden talking to a boy. The sunflowers shone beside them. Vanessa always talked to Brooke by the sunflowers. She said they reminded her of Brooke because they were yellow like her hair and so tall they almost reached the sun, and Brooke made her happy and warm like the flowers did. 

Her chest felt tight. For a minute she thought her breakfast might not stay down. The boy had dark brown hair and was dressed well. A horse chomped on grass nearby. He had to be from the village. Why would he be out in the woods by Vanessa’s cottage?

He said something, and Vanessa tossed her head back and laughed the way she did when she talked to Brooke, only Brooke wasn’t there to hear it. 

Was he going to be her friend now? Of course she was alright with Vanessa having a new friend, but what if--Brooke swallowed a lump in her throat--what if Vanessa didn’t want to be her friend _at all_ anymore? _What would Brooke do without her?_ Her cheeks were wet. Brooke didn’t even know the tears had started. 

Through her tear-streaked vision, she watched the boy kiss her. He kissed her and Brooke didn’t understand why it felt like she was burning inside. 

She turned back to her cottage and angrily wiped the tears away. Why did she care anyway? Vanessa would be 13 in a few months. She could do what she wanted. 

But Brooke didn’t sleep that night, the boy’s face flickering in and out of her mind. 

The next day Vanessa told her the boy had been exploring the forest and got lost and she took him back to her cottage to give him directions. 

So they weren’t friends. Brooke felt unexplainable lightness spread through her, and she and Vanessa talked and ate fresh raspberries while the sunflowers smiled above them. 

She pushed the boy out of her mind, and in her dreams, her own lips replaced his as they met Vanessa’s.  
—-

“How come you don’t have wings?” Vanessa asked one day. It had been in her head since she found out what Brooke was, and turning 14 recently gave her some new bravery. 

“I used to,” Brooke replied, looking down into the pond. 

Vanessa frowned in confusion. “Did something happen to them?”

“A human cut them off.”

“Oh,” Vanessa said quietly. “Did it hurt?”

Brooke nodded, and Vanessa saw the old pain reflected in her eyes. 

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

Brooke took a deep breath and stood abruptly. She lowered her dress, exposing the top half of her back. “You-you can see if you want. I’ve never showed anyone.”

Vanessa was about to tell Brooke she didn’t have to, but she understood how deeply Brooke must trust her, and Vanessa didn’t want her to regret that trust. 

She stepped closer. 

There were tiny black nubs on Brooke’s back, sticking roughly an inch out of her skin. The edges were jagged, and the skin around them was red, flecked with spidery green lines twisting away from them. 

She wondered how old Brooke was when it happened. She was six when Vanessa met her, and she didn’t have wings then. They must have been cut before that. Who could put someone that young through so much pain? 

Her fingers hovered over the lines. “Do they still hurt?”

“Not really. Only sometimes, if I move my shoulders wrong.”

Heart racing, moving quickly before she could stop herself, Vanessa leaned down and kissed the skin around one of the stumps. 

Brooke’s flesh broke out in goosebumps. Vanessa told herself it was probably from the air, though the sun was warm. 

She gently kissed around the other, then moved to Brooke’s front. She let her hands settle on Brooke’s bare back and their chests met. Brooke was warm, her heart pulsing against Vanessa. 

Brooke’s green eyes met hers and widened. Her lips parted slightly and her neck bent forward. Vanessa reached up, her lips just a moment away—

“Vanessa! You come home this instant!” Vanessa jerked back, skin still tingling where Brooke had been pressed against her. Only Aunt Silky’s voice could reach that far into the woods. 

Brooke hastily pulled her dress back up. 

Vanessa sighed. “I better go before she kills me.”

“Right. See you tomorrow.”

Vanessa turned reluctantly, their unfinished kiss trailing behind her and following her into her dreams.  
—-

Brooke held the bracelet nervously. Tomorrow was Vanessa’s 16th birthday, and Brooke had never given her a gift like this. Usually they gave each other sweets from the village, but Brooke turned 18 a few months ago and Vanessa had given her a necklace with a sunflower charm that she wore everyday, and she wanted to give Vanessa something special in return. 

She always felt guilty that Vanessa couldn’t wear her iron bracelet because of her, so she decided to give Vanessa a new one. This one was made of strong wood from a tree in the forest, the old, gnarled one she had been sitting in when she met Vanessa, and Brooke used tricky magic to carve the the bracelet so it was a circle of leaves. 

Vanessa was waiting at the edge of the woods in a soft pink dress, but her shoulders were curved in and she was crying. 

“Vanessa, what’s wrong?” Brooke carefully wiped one of the tears trailing down her cheek. Vanessa’s eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying for a long time. Vanessa cried more often than Brooke did, shedding tears over a rabbit with an injured leg, but for her to be crying this much, Brooke knew it was bad. 

“I have to leave,” she choked out between sobs. 

Brooke’s stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”

“My aunts just told me...it’s an order by the king and I have to go live in the castle, and there’s nothing I can do…”

Brooke pulled her in for a hug, not knowing what else to do. She rubbed Vanessa’s back and whispered that it was alright, even though Brooke felt like her entire world was coming apart and she had to hold back her own tears. 

“I have to go right now, they only gave me enough time to say goodbye to you.” Vanessa pulled away and sniffled. 

Brooke finally recovered her voice. She handed Vanessa the bracelet wrapped in thick paper. “This is for your birthday. You can open it when you want. Vanessa, I-you’re my best friend.”

“You’re my best friend too,” Vanessa responded, fresh tears springing in her eyes as she clutched the package. “I’ll come back, I promise.” 

And then she was gone, into a stagecoach and disappearing down the road, gone like the past 12 years had never happened. 

Brooke walked home numbly. She felt absolutely empty inside, like a hollowed out pumpkin. She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep until Vanessa came back, even if it took years. 

When she entered the cottage she found her mother in a deep black dress with her wings spread wide, ready to go out. 

“Where are you going?” Brooke asked. Her mother never dressed like that in her shop. 

“I’m off to the castle. I have some gloating to do, my dear.”

“Gloating for what?”

“Sit down. It’s time I told you everything.”

Her mother’s voice spun the tale, years of hatred running through her. She said the king hunted and killed fairies for the fun of it, and she made him bleed when he came after her. To teach her a lesson, he used her daughter. 

“The _king_ cut my wings off?” Brooke asked incredulously. 

She never remembered the face of the person that cut them. She was only three. She remembered someone ordering her to stay still as she kicked and writhed in pain. She remembered crying even as her mother applied healing balm and having to drink tea and potions for days afterward because she had screamed her voice away. 

“That’s right, and I decided to teach _him_ a lesson,” her mother continued. “I cursed his daughter to eternal sleep before she turned 16. Little Vanessa will be 16 tomorrow, and I intend to be there to taunt him.”

Brooke’s head snapped up. _It couldn’t be_. But how many girls named Vanessa turned 16 tomorrow _and_ had just received a mysterious summons from the king? 

“But-but why curse his daughter?” Brooke spluttered. “She was innocent!”

“He made me watch,” her mother said quietly. “His guards trapped me in an iron net, and I had to watch you scream and suffer and couldn’t help you. You were innocent too.”

The cottage was silent. Brooke didn’t even dare to breathe. It still didn’t seem fair to her but she knew not to argue. 

“So now he’ll watch his daughter suffer. Waiting foolishly for true love’s kiss to save her.”

With that, her mother left. 

Brooke’s head was spinning. Vanessa was the king’s daughter. Vanessa was a _princess_. And before tomorrow ended, she was going to sleep forever, because Brooke’s _mother_ had cursed her. 

How could her mother curse a baby? Brooke understood being upset over what the king did, but to curse an innocent child as revenge? Her mother had never been overly affectionate to her, but Brooke never thought of her as cruel. Maybe she didn’t know her mother as well as she thought. 

She couldn’t think about it. She had to save Vanessa. _True love’s kiss_. The boy in the village! He was the only other person she had ever seen with Vanessa, and he had kissed her before. He had to be the one. 

Brooke hopped on her horse and set off for the village, never wishing for her wings more.  
\---

Vanessa wore out the plush carpet in the castle bedroom. She had only been there a few hours but already wanted to go back to her cottage and back to Brooke. 

Her mind raced. She had been brought before the king and told things she didn’t think could be real, but were.

According to the king, Vanessa had been cursed by a fairy when she was a baby. He sent her to live in the woods so she’d be safe until she turned 16. Only her aunts--who weren’t aunts at all, but servants--mistakenly brought her back a day early. Her father, who Vanessa took an immediate dislike to, locked her in her room so she’d be safe for the next two days. 

The only thing keeping her together was the bracelet Brooke gave her. The whole thing was carved into leaves so precise and delicate that she knew Brooke had used her magic to do it. She ran her thumb over the cool wood. 

The clicking of the lock snapped her out of her thoughts. It was Aunt Kiki with a tray of food and a pitcher of water. The only food Vanessa wanted to eat was lemon cake by the pond with Brooke. 

She sat on the bed and her aunt--Vanessa still thought of her as an aunt--joined her. 

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked kindly. 

Vanessa shrugged. “Why?” She demanded. “Why would a fairy curse me? I didn’t _do_ anything.”

Her aunt patted her shoulder in comfort. “It wasn’t you she was mad at. It was your father. She took it out on you for what he did to her daughter.”

“What do you mean?”

Aunt Kiki sighed. “Your father hunted fairies for fun. One fairy fought against him and wounded him. He decided to punish the woman by using her daughter. He cut her wings off and made the fairy woman watch. I’m not supposed to speak ill of my king, but it was terribly cruel of him. The poor girl was only three, and innocent. So the girl’s mother cursed you as revenge.”

Vanessa listened to the story in silence. Her father, the king, cut the wings off a young fairy girl. _It couldn’t be. Please, it couldn’t be_.

“Do you know what the girl looked like?” She had to be sure. 

“I wasn’t there, but one of your father’s guards said she had very green eyes.”

Her aunt left and Vanessa began to cry. Her _father_ had been the one to hurt Brooke like that. How could he do that to a little girl? The shame rose in her and more tears fell. _How could she be related to such a monster?_

She wanted to run out of her room to Brooke. She knew the door would be locked, yet tried anyway in her frustration and was surprised when the handle turned. She entered the hallway, and dizziness hit her in waves, making her grit her teeth. A voice in her head told her it would stop if she went to the dungeon. 

_The dungeon, the dungeon_. She didn’t know her way but the voice guided her, and her hand quickly opened up the great oak door. 

Thousands of spinning wheels were piled up to the ceiling, bits broken off and blackened with ash. She headed toward an intact one in the center of the room, but a large wardrobe caught her eye. She opened the doors and a pair of midnight-black wings fluttered out, edges rough like they’d been sawed away. 

_These were Brooke’s wings_. They were smaller than Vanessa imagined, but she reminded herself that Brooke was a child when they were cut. They never got to grow with her. She was unsure if wings could reattach themselves, but she had to get them to Brooke so she could try. 

She was half-out the door when the voice got stronger, sending her to her knees in blinding pain. She was going to die if she didn’t listen, and the voice took her body to the wheel. The point of the needle twinkled, bursts of light piercing her eyes. She felt a prick and pulled her finger back, a tiny droplet of blood dripping on to the stone floor. 

Sleep slid over her like a cloud. Her eyes closed, and she followed after the blood, body crumbling to the floor.  
\---

Brooke gripped the reins tightly, the boy from the village, Philip, in the saddle with her. They galloped through the trees to the castle, Brooke’s heart beating faster with each clomp of the horse’s hooves. 

Philip had been easy to find, and even easier to convince to join her. He seemed eager to be a hero despite no heroic features that Brooke could discern, but he was her only hope. She informed him of the curse as the ground blurred beneath them.

“Are you sure this will work?” Philip asked doubtfully. “I barely know Vanessa. I kissed her once, and she pushed me off her. Said I better not do that ever again,” Philip explained. 

_Vanessa hadn’t wanted to kiss him_. Brooke couldn’t stop her smile from spreading, the jealousy of years ago never forgotten. Her relief quickly spoiled to fear. It indeed seemed unlikely that Philip would be Vanessa’s true love, but who else could it be? 

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Brooke insisted as the castle pulled into view. 

It wasn’t well guarded; in fact, it seemed the guards were all somewhere else. They slipped quietly inside and Brooke spotted someone. Silky, the loudest of Vanessa’s aunts. 

“I need to see Vanessa,” she burst out. “Please, I know about the curse, I can help her.”

Silky needed no more. She led Brooke and Philip upstairs to a row of bedrooms, past Vanessa’s other two aunts. 

Vanessa was laying on the bed, fast asleep. She looked peaceful and inhumanly beautiful, her curls framing her face. She was wearing the bracelet, and Brooke’s heart stirred. Her whole body felt like she was standing near a fire, and for a few seconds she didn’t know how to breathe. 

The feeling vanished as Philip delivered what appeared to be a very wet and slobbery kiss to Vanessa’s lips as Brooke and her aunts watched hopefully. He pulled away after an eternity, but Vanessa didn’t stir. 

Brooke looked down at the carpet helplessly, tears starting to flow. _What were they going to do now?_ Her mind was completely blank. _Who else could be Vanessa’s true love?_

“Sorry,” Philip mumbled, retreating to the hallway gracelessly. He at least had the decency not to remind Brooke that he told her it wouldn’t work. 

“Maybe you should try.”

Brooke’s head jerked up. One of Vanessa’s aunts--Kiki, she thought--looked at her kindly. 

“Maybe you should try,” she repeated. “You’re the girl Vanessa always talked about, aren’t you? She talked about you like you were the very sun in the sky.”

_Vanessa talked about_ her _like that?_ Brooke wasn’t able to talk about Vanessa at home, because she knew her mother would get mad, but the past 12 years of Brooke’s life had centered around Vanessa. Pacing restlessly waiting for Vanessa’s lessons to end. Looking around for new flowers to show Vanessa. Going into the village, feeling like everyone’s eyes were on her, her skin crawling as she trembled, just to surprise Vanessa with her favorite chocolates. 

It was friendship, yes, but Brooke knew she was lying to herself. 

It was--

It was _love_. 

“I’ll try,” Brooke whispered. Her head swam with doubts, but she had to try for Vanessa. And she could no longer deny how badly she wanted to kiss those lips. 

She gently pressed her lips to Vanessa’s. They were soft and smooth, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. 

In all the dreams Brooke had--dreams where she woke up smiling but wouldn’t admit it to herself--they were at the pond, having a picnic, and Brooke would ask Vanessa if she could kiss her, and Vanessa would say yes, and Brooke would realize just how long she had wanted to do it. Then Vanessa would kiss her back, and they’d live happily ever after. 

Brooke was about to give up when pressure against her lips made her aware that Vanessa suddenly _was_ kissing her back. 

Brooke stepped away to look at Vanessa, who was wide-awake and looking at her like she was the sun. 

“Brooke,” Vanessa whispered lovingly. “It really is you! I had dreams about you. I think I love you.”

“I think I love you too,” Brooke whispered. She leaned in for another kiss when the door flung open and guards rushed at her with a net. 

A net made of iron.  
\---

Vanessa hardly had time to understand what happened before Brooke was on the ground with a net over her, twisting in pain as her father’s guards kicked at her. 

_Why wasn’t she using magic?_ Then Vanessa got closer and saw the net was made of iron, struck with Brooke’s warning from years ago. 

Vanessa had to help her. _The wings._

“Kiki--I need to go to the dungeon and get Brooke’s wings!” Vanessa yelled over Brooke’s moans of pain. 

“They’re in my room!” Yvie interjected. “You were holding them when we found you and we thought they might be important.”

“Go get them!” Vanessa barked. 

Yvie rushed back in with the wings tucked under her arm. 

Vanessa grabbed them and took a breath. She didn’t know if this would work, but she had to try. She tossed the wings over to Brooke. They tore through the net and reunited with the stumps in Brooke’s back like a magical force pulled them there. 

Brooke stood up on shaky legs. Her wings fluttered majestically and Vanessa felt like she was truly seeing Brooke for the first time. The guards backed away. But she was still pale, a hand going to her head. 

Vanessa threw herself in front of the guards before they could hurt Brooke again. 

“I’m the princess,” she tried to sound regal and firm. “I order you to stand down. I want my father found and brought to me.”

The head guard nodded. “About time someone put that king in his place.” The guards obeyed and departed. She had to hide her surprise. Apparently she wasn’t the only one that disliked her father. 

Vanessa ran to Brooke. She was bent over and panting harshly. Vanessa took her hand and found it slick with sweat. 

“Are you alright?” She asked fearfully. 

Brooke nodded, taking a few more rough breaths. Her face was white as a sheet but she managed to stand up fully. “Vanessa, I have to tell you something. My mother, she-”

“I know.” Vanessa rubbed her back, carefully dodging the wings. “And I know my father’s the one that did that to you. I’m sorry.”

Brooke shook her head. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry too.”

“It’s not your fault either, Brooke,” Vanessa smiled. “We’re both alright, and that’s all that matters.”

“You’re right.” Brooke let her wings stretch out behind her, rippling like water in the moonlight. She wrapped one gently around Vanessa. It was glossy and cool yet warmed her like a blanket. 

Brooke looked down at Vanessa with tears in her eyes. “I forgot how _good_ they felt. Thank you for giving them back to me.”

The second wing wrapped around her, forming a cozy cocoon. Vanessa pulled Brooke down into another kiss that sent her whole body buzzing. 

This time, she was fully awake.  
\---

Vanessa allowed both their parents to live. 

She forgave Brooke’s mother and let her keep her shop. 

She forced her father to surrender the throne and let her take it. She restored safety and peace to the country, making no sure no fairies lived in fear of humans anymore. 

She appointed her aunts as her royal advisors. 

Humans and fairies loved her, and she ruled justly with Brooke by her side. 

At night, Brooke held her tightly while they soared around the castle and over the woods. 

Vanessa still wore her bracelet and Brooke still wore her necklace, and in time they added matching rings. 

And they both lived happily ever after.


End file.
